Law Enforcement is corrupt too

I mentioned that the federal government took the unusual step of not involving local law enforcement in their investigative efforts of corruption in our county governement. The easiest and normal course of action would be to issue subpoenas for the needed info with the involvement of local law enforcement. Instead FBI agents from 3 states were assembled to do dawn raids on county officials residences. Logistically this is much more difficult, since you can't trust that you will get what you are after you have to take out lots of materials (truck loads), take it to a secure warehouse, inventory it all, and then keep it secure.

Original speculation was that the county prosecutor would be implicated since he also acts as the lawyer for the corrupt county officials and should have known of their wrong doing. Actually a classic conflict of interest because he advises corrupt officials that should be prosecuted (by him). But judges are a member of the same labor union (bar) of the people they are to manage (lawyers). So the judiciary is fraught with conflicts. He's been in the spotlight but no strong allegations yet. Guess they are still going through the warehouse of material.

But our county sheriff is attracting attention now, apparently he advised someone how to avoid a subpoena (like the ones he's charged with serving), he has relatives on the payroll (like my judge's brother did), and he only shows up to work 1 day a week, but has no trouble cashing his $110,000 pay on time. Hmmm, assuming an 8 hour day (unlikely), that means he averages 1.6 hours a day, slightly more than half of my judge's 3 hour day. That would be a theft in office of $88,000 per year. Maybe he and my judge ($75,000 per year theft) should share a cell.

The key word is should. But they won't, and that's the sad state of justice in our corrupt county.


Update1: The sheriff resigned, just about insuring he won't be be sharing any cell.

Update2: The State Attorney General raided the sheriff's offices today (03/26/09) on the suspicion that evidence was being destroyed.